Fred Laymon landed in Camp Zama, Japan in1947, two years after United States airmen dropped two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During this time, Allied powers, led by the United States with contribution from the British Commonwealth occupied the Japanese islands in an effort to establish Japan as a democracy and help rebuild the country after the horrors of war.

Everyone knows the destruction and devastation wrought by the two atomic bombs that helped close out the Pacific Theater and end the war once and for all — but less well known is the American firebombing of Japanese cities, which, overall totaled more death and destruction than the initial death count from the atomic bombs.

Laymon saw the devastation these firebombing left firsthand.

“I never did know his last name, but I was invited for tea with a gentleman named Nokada. He lived in a partial house with his father. They went fishing and when they returned home they found their home had been firebombed by the Americans. They killed all his family except his father. Killed his mother and all the kids. That was a sad day for me to learn that.”

Laymon said he couldn’t understand why the Japanese cities had been targeted. They were residential areas filled with families — men, women and children.

“They didn’t care back then, I guess,” he said. “This was strictly people’s houses. I could never understand why we bombed those residential areas with firebombs when most of them were filled with anti-war Buddhists.”

Yet, despite a backdrop of violence and war, Laymon said the Japanese people were never hostile toward him. He described them as the “friendliest” and most “honest” people he had ever known.

“There was no hostility whatsoever,” he said. “I think it was their faith. They don’t hold grudges like some people do. I think we could stand to take a page from them in that regard. The three religions from the Middle East are trying to compete with each other. They all want to say they are the best — we’re the greatest. Buddhism is not like that. At least, not in Japan it wasn’t.”

Laymon’s first task once he landed in Japan was as a billeting clerk. Laymon took care of getting supplies for the Department of Civilians that were coming to Japan to work. Laymon was assigned duty over the an old imperial building that had been renamed the Samar Apartments and a large portion of the old Sumitomo Bank, now called Subic Bay.

“My duty was to prepare these buildings for living and eating quarters for women who worked for the Department of the Army. I picked up the supplies and began checking the women in until I had reached what was the capacity: 22 women in the Samar Apartments and 36 in Subic Bay.”

Laymon had a working knowledge of Japanese within one year and could carry on conversations that were “not too technical”.

“I still speak some Japanese when my friend Michako Bowman brings her friends and relatives over from Japan. Most of this has been forgotten, but not all of it.”

Laymon was also assigned to duty in Korea, but would not speak much about it other than to say: “I never bothered to learn their language. I took the lazy way out and found the older people who almost all spoke in Japanese as well as their own language.”

Laymon said that he preferred to spend his time dwelling on happier memories.

“I got an empty head here,” he said. “I’m getting old. I didn’t enjoy Korea. I don’t even want to talk about it. I like to remember the good things.”